Wednesday, April 6, 2016

The Abortion Question: The Light Versus the "Right" to Kill Very Little Girls

Amnesty International: “By not providing access to abortion services and information, each country fails to meet its human rights obligations set forth under international law.”

“Let’s celebrate Ireland’s people for demanding what’s right for women.”

“…the Irish people are calling for these same principles of equality and non-discrimination to apply to women and girls.”

What?!

When did killing an “unborn infant girl” become a “human right”?

Amnesty International, usually a ship of light for humanism and rights and justice and compassion, has swerved off into jagged cliffs on this one.

No one ever has a “right” to kill a human life.

The medical profession recognizes that life begins at conception.

Police officers sometimes seem to have no alternative but to shoot a murderer, but such lethal tragic action is never a "right."

Doctors used to take the Hippocratic Oath to protect life. “Nor shall any man's entreaty prevail upon me to administer poison to anyone; neither will I counsel any man to do so. Moreover, I will give no sort of medicine to any pregnant woman, with a view to destroy the child.”

But tragically, now doctors do kill life in the womb and kill the elderly and kill convicts.

According to AI editors, Ireland has “enacted draconian and harmful abortion laws that put women’s and girls’ lives at risk.”
No.

On the contrary, rules against abortion-on-demand protect. And they are the way to live peacefully, rejecting lethal violence.

CAUTION: We aren’t speaking here about therapeutic abortion. Ireland allows for tragic cases where a mother has to allow her newly conceived infant to be killed because complications endanger her own life and most likely the life of the infant, too. Something has gone wrong in the course of becoming pregnant. Doctors need to operate.

A real case in point. A strongly pro-life Quaker lady we knew became pregnant, but tragically, discovered she had the case of an ectopic-tubal pregnancy and had to have an abortion. Usually neither mother nor infant survive such pregnancies. So she did, but she didn’t think this was her “right,” and she deeply grieved the loss of their little infant.

Even in these tragic cases, we aren’t speaking of a woman’s “right” to an abortion. That’s a misuse of language!

Imagine as a woman going into an operation for a tumor and the doctor tells you that as a woman you have a “right” to get that tumor removed. Sounds a bit weird does it not?

It only makes sense to cut out malignant tumors.

It doesn’t make humanistic or Enlightenment sense to cut out normal healthy tiny little girls (or little boys) in the womb.

If a mother decides that because of troubling reasons she doesn’t want the unborn infant that she has chosen to conceive, then giving the little bundle of joy to a childless mother is the way to go.

Everybody wins—the infant, the new family, and the troubled mother.

But none of this has anything to do with a woman having a “right” to kill her infant in the womb.

Only in tragic cases of therapeutic abortion does the mother grieve and decide to have the tiny one killed.

She doesn’t declare, “I have a right to kill.”

And the criminal justice system in the United States takes a similar view when prosecuting killing. It often prosecutes a killer for two murders if he has killed a pregnant woman and her unborn infant.
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See Laci and Conner’s Law:

Long title An Act To amend title 18, United States Code, and the Uniform Code of Military Justice to protect unborn children from assault and murder, and for other purposes.
Nicknames Laci and Conner's Law
Enacted by the 108th United States Congress

The Unborn Victims of Violence Act of 2004 (Public Law 108-212) is a United States law which recognizes a child in utero as a legal victim, if they are injured or killed during the commission of any of over 60 listed federal crimes of violence. The law defines "child in utero" as "a member of the species Homo sapiens, at any stage of development, who is carried in the womb".

The law is codified in two sections of the United States Code: Title 18, Chapter 1 (Crimes), §1841 (18 USC 1841) and Title 10, Chapter 22 (Uniform Code of Military Justice) §919a (Article 119a).

The law applies only to certain offenses over which the United States government has jurisdiction, including certain crimes committed on federal properties, against certain federal officials and employees, and by members of the military. In addition, it covers certain crimes that are defined by statute as federal offenses wherever they occur, no matter who commits them, such as certain crimes of terrorism.

Because of principles of federalism embodied in the United States Constitution, federal criminal law does not apply to crimes prosecuted by the individual states. However, 38 states also recognize the fetus or "unborn child" as a crime victim, at least for purposes of homicide or feticide--Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Nebraska, Nevada, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia and Wisconsin...

The bill contained the alternate title of Laci and Conner's Law after the California mother (Laci Peterson) and fetus (Conner Peterson) whose deaths were widely publicized during the later stages of the congressional debate on the bill in 2003 and 2004 (see Scott Peterson and Laci Peterson). Scott Peterson was convicted of double homicide under California's fetal homicide law.”
Wikipedia
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Of course, there is the opposite extreme from abortion-on-demand, that of the right-wingers who, while opposing abortion, don't want to help little infants and children.

Oppose abortion-on-demand, the killing of the most innocent and vulnerable.

Oppose anti-immigration forces which ignore impoverished children and teens stuck alone on the border.

Oppose the bombing of foreign countries where hundreds of thousands of civilians suffer and die.

Oppose the killing of civilians by Muslim “martyrs” who attack with knives, cars, and guns.

Oppose the intentional killing of the elderly.

Be prolife for the unborn, for the born, for infants and children in poverty, for at-risk teens, for poor and persecuted people around the world, for humans of all ages.

To paraphrase: ALL human lives are created equal, have certain unalienable Rights that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

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Words of Truth

TO BE HOPEFUL in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness.

What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives…If we remember those times and places…where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction.

And if we do act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory. --Howard Zinn

I refuse to accept despair as the final response to the ambiguities of history. I refuse to accept the idea that the "isness" of man's present nature makes him morally incapable of reaching up for the eternal "oughtness" that forever confronts him.--Martin Luther King Jr.

True religion consisted in an inward life, wherein the heart does love and reverence God the Creator, and learns to exercise true justice and goodness...I found no narrowness respecting sects and opinions, but believed that sincere, upright-hearted people, in every society, who truly love God, were accepted of him.--John Woolman

Love each other as I have loved you.. I call you friends because I have made known to you everything I heard from my Father.--Jesus in John 15: 12-15

...Love God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind and your neighbor as yourself.

You have answered right, said Jesus, do this and life is yours...

Who is my neighbor?

Jesus replied with the Parable of the Good Samaritan [heretic, outsider, enemy].--from Luke 10:27-37

Religion has been emphatically embodied, not in speculative theories, but in practical righteousness, in active virtues, in reverence to God, in benevolence to man- the latter being the only sure test of the former. --Thomas M'Clintock

...It is safer to approach God through the Holy Spirit than through the door of theology. We can identify the Holy Spirit whenever it makes its presence felt. Whenever we see someone who is loving, compassionate, mindful, caring, and understanding, we know that the Holy Spirit is there. --Thich Nhat Hanh

Faith...manifests itself in all righteousness and works of love; it clothes the naked; feeds the hungry; consoles the afflicted; shelters the miserable; aids and consoles all the oppressed; returns good for evil; serves those that injure it; prays for those that persecute it.--Menno Simons

About Me

A committed Process-theist, Enlightenment ethicist and humanist, moral realist, human rights activist, and moderate skeptic (like Martin Gardner co-founder of the modern skeptic movement). I am a free-seeker--an avid seeker of the Good, the True, the Beautiful, and of equality, peace, justice, mercy, compassion, fidelity, generosity, and so forth. I try and model my life on Jesus' Sermon on the Mount and his parables such as the Good Samaritan. I've a deep passion for worldwide outreach to those in need. Loving and living for the Divine--Ultimate Reality in whom we love, move, and have our being.
A poet and novelist; Married with three grown kids; Degree in Creative Writing from Cal State University Long Beach; Lived in the Middle East, Montana, etc; Former literature and writing teacher.